Hit the autopilot

Like people and the seasons, businesses have many different stages of life.

Some are newborn babies.

Some are venerable old cowboys that at 86 can still take a strong 22 year old and stomp the crud out of ’em.

And some are working on that maturing thing.

Taking flight

One thing that a lot of folks tend to get stuck on (including me from time to time) is making your business scalable.

What if you got 10 new customers tomorrow? Â It might not cause you any difficulty – unless you do a lot of one-on-one work.

What about 100 new customers? 1000? 10000?

TOMORROW.

Could you, your business, your family deal with that? Â The income would be nice, but can you actually handle the work?

I know things are real slow for a lot of folks, but it’s definitely possible – even today.

One way to deal with this, depending on the kind of work you do, is to structure your business like an airliner.

No, I don’t mean an airline. That would require treating people poorly and, well, you know the drill. I mean like an airliner.

Takeoff, Climb, Cruise

Your business can be a lot like a plane climbing to cruising altitude: a lot of energy (and money) is consumed to reach that 35,000 ft cruising altitude.

But what happens at 35,000 ft? Fuel requirements shrink. The plane is easier to fly. Pilots can even hit the autopilot button and take a nap.

Your businesses – or product line(s) – can be the same way.

Once you get each line of work up to altitude, consider structuring it so you can hit cruise, in other words – delegate much of the work by designing a process that others can be trained to follow, making sure to set up a way to monitor quality, throughput etc.

Now that you’ve put that business line, product or service on autopilot, use your time, energy and expertise to build something else of value for your clientele.